THE MURDER OF BINDY MACKENZIE
Jaclyn Moriarty
Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic
Fiction
Hardcover: 0439740517
Paperback: 9780439740524
496 pages

Bindy Mackenzie is the smartest girl at Ashbury High. She has the highest grades, she is the fastest typist, and she has crammed her schedule with extracurricular activities intended to improve the lives of others. But when Bindy is assigned to a teen counseling group called Friendship and Development (FAD for short), her life starts to fall apart.

First, she discovers that her classmates resent her perfection. Then her health starts to fail. She's sleepy all the time, has dizzy spells and becomes obsessed with the word "Cincinnati." Finally, her grades begin slipping, and she just doesn't care. Is Bindy going insane? Or has she become the latest victim to a sinister plot? With only the help of her counseling group, Bindy must unravel the mystery before it is too late.

THE MURDER OF BINDY MACKENZIE is the latest installment from Jaclyn Moriarty about the intersecting lives of teenagers at Ashbury High. Readers familiar with her first two novels, FEELING SORRY FOR CELIA and THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS, will recognize the setting, some of the characters and the epistlatory style. Like the other two novels, BINDY is told completely in documents, depending on Bindy's obsessive documentation of her life to reveal the story. What initially appears to be a hodgepodge of lists, diary entries and transcripts of seemingly unimportant conversations add up to an unexpected conspiracy.

Several stories overlap in the novel. BINDY reads like the first-person narrative of an overachiever coming unhinged. Between her social troubles at school, a homelife so fragmented she's moved in with her aunt, and the bizarre health problems that starts afflicting her already unusual personality, the reader has every reason to suspect that Bindy really is going insane. But Moriarty is too clever and too kind to destroy such a spirited character.

Not only does Moriarty sustain Bindy's voice through the length of the book, she wins her readers' sympathy for her socially clueless character. Best of all, Bindy does not have to endure a humiliating makeover to be made likable for the reader or the other characters in the book. As details of Bindy's situation emerge, the reader and the peer advisory group within the novel discover Bindy's hopes, fears and humanity together.

BINDY would be a good read even if it weren't a mystery novel, but the surprising conclusion at the end of the book makes it worth reading twice. Every entry is a clue to an entertaining and ingenious solution. This is simultaneously a teen buddy novel, an insanity narrative and a mystery. It's not easy to juggle these different elements while maintaining a light and humorous tone. Nevertheless, Moriarty meets the challenge, giving us another novel about young people who face life's difficulties with charm, dignity and courage.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

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